The Best Mage Races for PvE in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

As an avid World of Warcraft player and gaming content creator, I love analyzing the nuts and bolts of race choice and finding those small optimizations that can give you an edge. For mages in Shadowlands PvE, the best options balance raw throughput with utility:

Horde – Troll
Alliance – Dwarf

Troll and Dwarf nip past the other contenders largely thanks to their solid racials that boost damage in ways tailored for caster DPS. However, utility and personal preference should still play a major role in your decision.

Let‘s dive into the theorycrafting and community perceptions to see why these two races excel:

Simulations Show Troll and Dwarf Ahead in Raw Throughput

Based on simulations across various gear levels, Troll and Dwarf consistently come out ahead of other races by a small margin for max level 60 mages:

While a 2% damage gain may seem trivial, it can make the difference of a few seconds shaved off an encounter time or an extra cast squeezed into a damage window.

What makes Troll so strong is Berserking, which functions as a solid secondary throughput cooldown giving 10% haste for 10 seconds, lining up well with your standard combustions. Dwarf gains an advantage through Stoneform removing debuffs along with granting immunity to bleeds, poisons, and diseases while active. The dispel protection opens up extra damage windows.

Sims aren‘t everything though…

Community Perceptions Favor These Top Picks

In analyzing mage community discussions, Troll and Dwarf consistently come up as top race recommendation, which matches the simulation data:

Interestingly, Dwarf overtakes Gnome in perception despite Escape Artist being excellent utility. This suggests some undervaluation of Stoneform‘s protective element and the throughput gain being enough to push Dwarf over the top.

Utility and Passives Play a Role Too

Speaking of utility, while Troll and Dwarf are great pure DPS options, other racials bring combat usefulness too:

Nightborne/Void Elf: AoE interrupts from Arcane Pulse and Spatial Rift
Gnome: Escape Artist‘s snare/root removal

Undead: Touch of the Grave‘s extra shadow damage

Particularly on high movement fights or ones with interrupt requirements, these racials can shift the value proposition.

We must also consider passive always-on effects versus activated on-use abilities with a longer cooldown. Stoneform and Escape Artist fall into the latter category, making them less reliable than Berserking or Touch of the Grave passives which have close to 100% uptime in an encounter.

In Closing – A Great Decision Regardless of Your Pick

While number crunching and community perceptions indicate Troll and Dwarf pull slightly ahead, every race is viable for mages. So my advice is to focus on your personal preference for aesthetics and animations rather than fixating on tiny statistical differences.

You can‘t go wrong with any choice here, so ultimately having fun with what you play matters more than mathematical min-maxing!

Let me know your thoughts on these top mage races and if you have any other optimization topics you‘d love to see covered!